Access to healthcare and city or suburban lifestyles seem to be tied to a longer life.
Where you live plays a big part in your life expectancy. "Many studies have recently highlighted this growing divide between health outcomes in urban and rural America. But it’s increasingly true that, more than income, more than the frequency with which you exercise, the simple fact of where you live can have a huge impact on your health" according to a story from Sarah Frostenson in Vox.
Over the past 15 years, the rates of deaths from heart disease and cancer have slowed down as treatments improved. But, "[i]n rural areas, improvements are now slowing and even declining, widening the rural-urban health gap," Frostenson writes. "Most shockingly, rural Americans were 50 percent more likely to die from an unintentional injury than urban Americans during this 15-year period," she continues. There are many possible causes for the poor public health outcomes of rural areas, including the lack of health resources in sparsely populated areas. "Rural health clinics are far more likely to be understaffed (only 11 percent of all physicians choose to practice in rural areas), and they often lack subspecialty care, which hurts people who need specialized treatment," Frostenson writes.
FULL STORY: The death rate gap between urban and rural America is getting wider
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Placekeeping: Setting a New Precedent for City Planners
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Using Old Oil and Gas Wells for Green Energy Storage
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Washington State Plans Ambitious ‘Cycle Highway’ Network
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Homeowners Blame PG&E for Delays in ADU Permits
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Rethinking Wildfire Defense: How a Landscape Approach Can Protect Neighborhoods
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Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
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Borough of Carlisle
Caltrans
Heyer Gruel & Associates PA
Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS)
City of Grandview
Harvard GSD Executive Education
Salt Lake City
NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
City of Cambridge, Maryland